Pop Goes to Court: Rock 'N' Pop's Greatest Court Battles

Bibliography

Preface

Dark and dingy clubs, swanky theatres, big city stadiums and festivals promoting love and peace; these are the sorts of places where you expect to catch sight of the biggest names in rock and pop music. But over the years – and the past half-century in particular – a different and perhaps more mundane and austere location has been the venue for a series of headline- and attention-grabbing performances.

In hallowed halls of justice around the world, legal tussles involving star names, plus their families, friends, partners, critics, mentors and fans, have allowed the media and the public a rare insight into matters that, but for a lawsuit, would have remained locked in the file marked private and confidential.

Arguments over contracts, wills, newspaper articles, agreements (written and unwritten), trademarks and technology, plus tragic suicides, have all had to go to court to be resolved, and watching the rich and the famous settle their differences in open court is what, for many fans and pundits, makes the business of rock and pop truly entertaining.

The public airing of details about finances, friendships, partnerships and sexual preferences can be a very necessary part of winning legal satisfaction.

After all, we should never forget that it was in an English high court where the career of the world’s most popular and successful group finally came to a shuddering halt.

The legal break-up of The Beatles is just one in a series of high profile court cases in which the lives and times of a host of the world’s most successful and most popular musicians have been exposed and examined under scrutiny from both the media and the public.

Even before pop music began to take hold in the Fifties, the big-time actors and singers who had their names up in lights were all contracted to major film studios and record labels. And almost without exception, each one of them had an agent and/or a manager and, somewhere in the background, there would also have been a lawyer. At the first sign of a dispute over money, billing, co-stars or contracts, the legal eagles would have been called into action.

Sometimes these differences were settled out of court, with most of the juicy details being kept secret and with nobody ever taking the blame. But when it was impossible to settle privately – either in or out of court – then the full weight of the law was brought to bear in what was usually a high-profile, well-publicised and, more often than not, hurtful legal encounter.

And in the modern era of pop and rock music it has been no different. For years, judges have sat in judgement as the stars – and often those nearest and dearest to them – have fought over things said and done or, in some cases, not done.

While a good many of these legal differences of opinion are centred around contract disputes and issues involving royalty payments and composing credits, the subject of wills, suicides, trademarks, libels and memorabilia also figure in cases involving popular publications, a disgruntled politician, world-renowned companies and an impressive collection of some of the biggest names in the entertainment business.

The Beatles, The Smiths, Ozzy Osbourne, Elton John, George Michael, The Spice Girls and U2 are among those who have been forced into the courts of law to either state their cases or clear their names. At the same time, businesses operating on behalf of legends such as Elvis Presley and Jimi Hendrix have been publicly scrutinised in the name of justice.

The pages of Pop Goes To Court trace and chronicle some of the most famous, notorious, important and amusing court cases involving the great and the good of rock and pop ever to be set before judges and juries.

It was Charles Dickens who wrote the law is an ass. Whether those words, as uttered by Mr Bumble in Oliver Twist, are true or not, it seems that turning to the legal system is still a popular or, maybe in some cases, last port of call for artists, managers, companies, fans and families when all other more reasonable (and cheaper) options have been exhausted.

Even as the finishing touches were being put to this collection of music-related legal spats, there came news of two more fascinating and entertaining disputes that were only at the embryonic stage but could yet turn into full-scale court cases.

Morrissey – star of a high-profile 1996 high court appearance involving The Smiths – issued two writs against New Musical Express and its editor, Conor McNicholas, alleging defamation over quotes attributed to the singer in a November 2007 issue of the music magazine.

Reporting news of the legal proceedings in its November 30 issue, The Times began its story with the less than complimentary sentence, Bigmouth has struck again and, heaven knows he’s miserable now.

After suggesting that the ex-Smiths front man took a naïve and inflammatory stance on immigration and employed language that dangerously echoes the British National Party’s manifesto, NME stood accused of misquoting Morrissey and taking his words out of context.

A week or two earlier there was news of a dispute in America over a made-up word that appeared as the title of both a best-selling album and a top-rated US television show.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers issued Californication in 1999 and hit the charts with both the album and the title-track single. In 2007, a TV series of the same name, starring X-Files actor David Duchovny, was aired in both the US and the UK and the four-piece rock band began proceedings against the show’s makers, Showtime, for damages. They also took out an injunction to stop the TV network from using the word.

While the band’s singer, Anthony Kiedis, went on record to claim that "Californication is the signature CD, video and song of the band’s career, there were stories of the word – a combination of California and fornication – appearing as far back as 1972, when it was defined as haphazard, mindless development that has already gobbled up most of Southern California".

Who will win? We’ll have to wait and see, but it may not necessarily be he who dares to go to court. The fact that there are always prosecuting and defending counsels arguing over their interpretation of the same facts means that taking legal action is, and always will be, a lottery.

Having right on your side is not always enough. A highly publicised, possibly even sensational, court case can test the patience of even the most devoted fans when they hear and read about the antics and attitudes of their heroes.

Sometimes winning isn’t everything … but it’s usually a lot cheaper than losing!

Chapter 1

LIBERACE

Took offence at what the papers said about him

There are a whole load of things we know about Wladziu Valentino Liberace: he had a piano-shaped swimming pool, a taste for rhinestone and fur outfits, and he stuck a candelabra on his piano as part of his stage act. And, as was mentioned in every obituary, he died from Aids and never married. Funny that!

By themselves, these last two facts did not necessarily make the enormously successful and popular entertainer, whose career spanned five decades, homosexual, but, in the Fifties – when homosexuality was still illegal – the world of nudge-nudge-wink-wink had him down as gay whether he liked it or not.

And, as the world was to find out in 1959, the man with the dimpled grin, camp innuendos and over-the-top showbiz lifestyle was not best pleased by accusations about his sexuality.

At his peak, Liberace rivalled Elvis Presley as a major draw on America’s live concert circuit. As far back as 1952, he attracted a record-breaking 22,000 fans to the famous Hollywood Bowl where, for the first time, he appeared in a white evening suit.

It was the start of something very big indeed.

He added a $10,000 black mohair suit with diamond-studded buttons to his wardrobe and, by the end of the decade, he’d assembled a collection of 60 suits, 80 pairs of shoes and a gold lamé dinner jacket, which, bizarrely, he strenuously maintained had not been designed by Christian Dior.

All this excess – including having a replica of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel painted in his bedroom – brought him regular earnings of over a million dollars a year from television and concert appearances, plus millions more from record sales, endorsements and investments.

With his brother George at his side as both orchestra leader and the butt of his jokes, Liberace used his enormous wealth to occasionally mock his audience. I’ve had so much fun tonight that honestly I’m ashamed to take the money – but I will, and, Do you like my outfit? You should – you paid for it were just two of the gags that endeared him to his fans.

Liberace, whose father was a French horn player who had performed with John Philip Sousa, added to his appeal to the middle-aged mothers of America by doting on his own mother. His fans responded by sending him 27,000 valentine cards each year and around 12 offers of marriage every month.

In the midst of all this excess and activity, Liberace consistently denied he was homosexual, which brought a backlash from the early gay liberation movement, whose members disapproved of his apparent closet homosexuality.

However, the man who was ultimately destined to suffer the wrath of the offended and outraged piano-player from Wisconsin was a state-educated boy with ambitions to join the Navy. Poor eyesight put paid to William Connor’s naval aspirations, however, and he was forced to work as a messenger in a London store.

Displaying a growing love and skill for writing, Connor eventually joined an advertising agency and, at the age of 26, finally earned a position with the Daily Mirror, one of Britain’s most popular daily news -papers, where he was soon given a daily column written under the name Cassandra.

After service in Italy and North Africa during World War II, Connor returned to the Mirror in 1946 and immediately took up the pen. With the phrase, As I was saying when I was interrupted …, he resumed his regular Cassandra column. In the autumn of 1956, he turned his attention to Liberace, the classically trained pianist who once jumped out of a giant Fabergé egg dressed in a costume of feathers.

Liberace sailed into England on September 25 – complete with 30 crates of outfits, a Perspex piano and his mum – to be met by over 3,000 excited women. Thousands more – described at the time as screaming bobby-soxers – mobbed his train when it arrived at London’s Waterloo station.

The very next day Connor wrote a blistering attack on Liberace under the heading Yearn – Strength Five, a reference to a drink the writer had tasted in Berlin in 1939 called Windstärke Fünf, which was the most powerful alcoholic concoction made in Germany.

The article continued: "I have to report that Mr Liberace, like Windstarke Funf, is about the most that man can take. But he is not a drink, he is yearning – wind strength five. He is the summit of sex – the pinnacle of masculine, feminine and neuter. Everything that he, she and it can ever want.

"I spoke to sad but kindly men on this newspaper who have met every celebrity arriving from the US for the past thirty years.

"They all say that this deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered, heap of mother love has had the biggest reception and impact on London since Charlie Chaplin arrived at the same station, Waterloo, on September 12th, 1921.

"This appalling man – and I use the word appalling in no other than its true sense of terrifying – has hit this country in a way that is as violent as Churchill receiving the cheers on VE day.

"He reeks with emetic language that can only make grown men long for a quiet corner, an aspidistra, a handkerchief and the old heave-ho.

"Without doubt this is the biggest sentimental vomit of all time. Slobbering over his mother, winking at his brother and counting the cash at every second, this superb piece of calculating candy-floss has an answer for every situation.

"Nobody since Aimee Semple-McPherson* has purveyed a bigger, richer, more varied slagheap of lilac-covered hokum. Nobody anywhere ever made so much money out of high speed piano playing with the ghost of Chopin gibbering at every note.

There must be something wrong with us that our teenagers longing for sex and middle-aged matrons fed up with sex alike should fall for such a sugary mountain of jingling claptrap wrapped up in such a preposterous clown.

On October 18, Liberace again featured in Connor’s Cassandra column when, under the heading Calling All Cussers, he wrote: "In their daily programme of events called ‘Today’s Arrangements’, The Times was yesterday at its impassive unsmiling best.

It said: ‘St Vedast’s, Foster Lane: Cannon C.B. Mortlock, 12.30; St Paul’s Covent Garden: the Rev Vincent Howson, 1.15; St Botolph’s, Bishopsgate: Preb H.H. Treacher, 1.15; All Souls Langham Place: Mr H.M. Collins 12.30; Albert Hall: Liberace, 7.30.

Rarely has the sacred been so well marshalled alongside the profane.

These two collections totalling just a few hundred words, printed in a newspaper with a daily circulation of over four and a half million, were destined to bring Liberace and Connor face to face in London’s Royal Courts of Justice nearly three years later.

Within days of the article being published, the American entertainer had sought legal advice from his American lawyer, John Jacobs, and they decided to sue for libel, which Jacobs defined legally as, to defame or expose to public hatred, contempt or ridicule by a writing, picture or sign. However, despite their enthusiasm for action, the musician’s heavily booked touring schedule meant the earliest date for a court hearing would be June 1959.

Reflecting on his emotions on the day the high court proceedings began, Liberace wrote in his autobiography, I find it difficult to put into words how I felt that Monday, June 8, 1959, as I sat in an English courtroom, Queens Bench Number Four, surrounded by black-robed, white-wigged gentlemen, and prepared to hear myself vilified, as well as defended, and waited to find out whether I’d done the right thing or the wrong one in following the insistence of my conscience and the confirmation of my attorney.

The court was gathered before Mr Justice Sir Cyril Salmon, whose wife was apparently gathered in the gallery alongside loyal fans and curious onlookers to hear the evidence given to the jury of 10 men and two women.

Liberace was represented by Gilbert Beyfus QC, recognised at the time as the oldest practising barrister on the south-eastern circuit and known within the corridors of the law as The Fox. This nickname failed to impress Liberace, who described the 76-year-old barrister as looking like a toothless old lion.

In fact, the American plaintiff was so dismayed and perhaps even disappointed with his counsel that he added, My heart sank, I knew then and there that I didn’t have a prayer.

Opposing him was Gerald Gardiner QC, who had recently been elected chairman of the General Council of the Bar, and, on behalf of both Cassandra and the Daily Mirror, he claimed that the statements of fact in the articles were true and the expressions of opinion were fair comment.

London was about to endure and/or enjoy the most sensational libel trial since 1895, when Oscar Wilde had sued his male lover’s father for libel over allegations that he was a homosexual. Unsuccessful in that case, the playwright and society wit was subsequently convicted of committing sodomy and sentenced to two years in prison, famously served at Reading Gaol.

Now Liberace’s fans around the world waited with bated breath as their hero stood to be paraded, questioned and accused before a judge and jury in a London courtroom.

Beyfus opened his case by telling the court that the alleged libel was as vicious and violent attack on a plaintiff as can well be imagined, written by as vicious and violent writer as has ever been in the profession of journalism in the City of London.

With his opening gambit made, Beyfus went on to explain that the origin of Connor’s nom de plume (which Liberace some time later dubbed a nom de slur) was a Trojan princess who constantly prophesised evil. Connor later expanded upon this description, telling the court that Cassandra was in fact, a sometime gloomy prophetess who was always right but, because of a curse from the Gods, nobody ever believed her.

Liberace’s counsel then addressed the subject of his client’s elaborate wardrobe of what might be called fancy dress and, turning his attention to the styles and fashions of the day, he dragged into the debate soldiers, knights of the realm and even members of the legal profession.

"In these days of somewhat drab and dreary male clothing, remember the Guards at Buckingham Palace, the Horse Guards in Whitehall, the Beefeaters at the Tower, the uniforms of the Privy Counsellors, Knights of the Garter and Peers of the Realm.

Look at the Hunt Ball, when tough hunting men prance around in pink coats with silk lapels of different colours. Some add dignity, all add colour, Beyfus said, before turning to look around the courtroom for further inspiration. Look at me, my lord and my learned friends, dressed in accordance with old traditions. We do not dress like this in ordinary life, nor does Liberace.

He summed up his client’s undoubted showmanship and the candel-abra he used in his act as a trademark, something like Maurice Chevalier’s straw hat.

Finally, having read out loud the offending article written by Connor, Beyfus gave the court his interpretation of the piece. It was as savage a diatribe as can be imagined. It meant, and was intended to mean, that Liberace was a homosexual. That is as clear as clear can be, otherwise I venture to suggest the words have no meaning at all.

Beyfus finished his opening speech by describing Connor as a literary assassin who dips his pen in vitriol, hired by this sensational news -paper to murder reputation and hand out the sensational articles on which its circulation is built.

When Liberace took the stand on the first day, he spent time out -lining how his career had developed and how his success inspired him towards a glamorous lifestyle. He also confirmed that he had made a deliberate attempt to keep the offending Daily Mirror article away from his mother who, when she did finally see it, fell ill.

At this point, Beyfus asked Liberace the question the whole court and the entire country had been waiting for. Are you homosexual? to which Liberace replied, No, sir.

Gardiner, for Cassandra and the Daily Mirror, immediately objected to the introduction of the question of homosexuality. There is no suggestion and never has been anything of the kind.

Beyfus then took it a stage further. Have you ever indulged in homosexual practices? and Liberace’s reply was, No, sir, never in my life.

Asked by his counsel what his feelings were towards homosexual acts, Liberace continued with his denial. My feelings are the same as anyone else’s. I am against the practice because it offends convention and offends society.

So there it was in open court. Liberace was not homosexual and had never committed a homosexual act. The preening, primping, winking and over-the-top camp excesses were all part of an act that, he told the court, he had tried his best to fill with sincerity and wholesomeness.

In cross-examination, Gardiner asked the American star if he thought an earlier Daily Sketch article that said, even bankers behave like bobby-soxers at Liberace’s playing, suggested that he was homosexual. Again, Liberace said no.

As arguably the most sensational libel trial in 50 years, the reports in the next day’s newspapers of the opening day in court wallowed in the welter of innuendo and homosexual references.

They offered up such headlines as – Liberace Called ‘The Summit Of Sex’ and Newspaper Sued Over Summit Of Sex, plus I’m Not A Sex Appeal Artist, while the rather staid New York Times preferred the more factual Liberace Denies He Is Homosexual.

Yet even the cruellest of these headlines was nothing compared to an American magazine called Hush-Hush, which, two years before the trial started but after the publication of Cassandra’s column, had carried the banner headline posing the question: Is Liberace A Man?

Two other American scandal sheets – Hollywood Confidential and Rave – had added fuel to the fire and tested Liberace’s resolve with salacious articles carrying sensational headlines questioning his sexuality.

Hollywood Confidential stated in its headline: Why Liberace’s Theme Song Should Be ‘Mad About The Boy’, while Rave offered the banner: Liberace: Don’t Call Him Mister! Other American publications, both scandal sheets and more reputable papers, had on more than one occasion referred to the pianist and entertainer as a sissy, a mama’s boy and even a homosexual.

Opening day two of the case, Gardiner asked Liberace about sex appeal – I deny that I trade on it, said the pianist; his fans – I love my fans and I believe they love me; and scent – I do not use scent but I do use aftershave lotions, deodorants and eau de cologne, all well-groomed men do.

Shown an article written by Daily Mirror showbiz writer Donald Zec, Liberace denied suggestions that he did a springy little walk round the piano or that he imitated a showgirl lifting her skirt coyly, and that he owned a parakeet that screeched the name Liberace. I have a parakeet but it doesn’t speak a word, he said.

The performer told the court that he was in fact grateful to Zec for the fact that he did not use in his article the expression, he, she, it, masculine, feminine or neuter or fruit-flavoured. The phrases were all part of Cassandra’s allegedly libellous column and, according to Liberace, were all expressions which in America are termed homo sexual.

He further confirmed to Gardiner that none of the press reviews he had received in America had ever used expressions denoting homosexuality.

Turning to Liberace’s personal hygiene, Gardiner was keen to find out whether the American entertainer used scent or scented lotion, and was informed that Liberace did indeed use scented aftershave lotions and underarm deodorants.

Defence counsel suggested that when Liberace came into a room a noticeable odour comes with you, to which the plaintiff replied: I would not say it is an odour. I would say it is a scent of good grooming, that I smell clean and fresh. He added that the reference to scents in the Daily Mirror article implied an accusation that he was a homosexual.

Getting to the crux of the matter, Gardiner then asked Liberace whether the words, He is the summit of sex – the pinnacle of masculine, feminine and neuter. Everything that he, she and it can ever want seriously suggested that he was homosexual?

In reply, Liberace told the court: That is the interpretation that was given and understood without exception by everyone I have company with.

Quoting again from the offending Cassandra article, Gardiner suggested that the statement saying that Liberace exuded love meant that he had great sex appeal and that he attracted all sections of the community, but not in any improper sense.

Liberace’s response was to claim that the feature was, "The most improper article that has ever been written about me. It has been widely quoted in all parts of the world and has been reproduced exactly as it appeared in the Daily Mirror.

It has been given the interpretation of homosexuality. One paper had the headline, ‘Is Liberace A Man?’

Gardiner’s reply was to suggest that readers must have filthy minds if they thought the words implied that Liberace was homosexual. Liberace retaliated by saying that the phrase fruit-flavoured was one commonly directed at homosexuals and added, The reason I am in court is that this article attacked me below the belt on a moral issue.

Moving on to the phrase summit of sex, Gardiner argued that it was simply Cassandra’s description of the universality of your appeal and nothing to do with being homosexual, which prompted Liberace to argue: "People have given it that interpretation. It has caused me untold agonies and embarrassment and has made me the subject of ridicule.

On my word of God, on my mother’s health, which is so dear to me, this article only means one thing, that I am a homosexual and that is why I am in this court.

Liberace’s evidence lasted six hours, and he was followed into the witness box by a variety of witnesses called by Beyfus on his client’s behalf.

First up was writer Dail Ambler, who said that she had been to interview Connor (Cassandra) about his pet cat just after the writ for libel had been issued. She alleged that Connor laughed about it and said that it was a libel for which Liberace would get a lot of money from the Daily Mirror and that the libel was in the phrase he, she or it.

When she asked Connor why he had written it and why it had been printed, she told the court that Connor had told her: They think it will be worth it for a week’s publicity, and then added, I don’t know who will look the bigger buffoon in the witness box, he or me.

Actress Cicely Courtneidge and cabaret star Hélène Cordet both gave evidence that they had seen performances by Liberace and neither of them considered the shows to be sexy or suggestive, while comedian Bob Monkhouse gave the court a sample of his impersonation of the American performer which he used in his stage act, adding that Liberace had seen the performance and had been enormously helpful.

Midway through the third day of the libel case, Gardiner opened the defence on behalf of the Mirror and Cassandra with an argument for free speech and democracy. "It [free speech] was not a special right of newspapers but it was everyone’s right to say what they thought on any matter of public interest.

A democracy cannot really work in any other way because public opinion has to be formed and public opinion grows out of expressions of differences of opinion.

He added that the question before the jury was not whether they agreed with what Cassandra had said but whether he held that opinion honestly.

Acknowledging that Connor was a serious man who took a slightly gloomy view of life and was very conscious of cruelties and suffering, Gardiner added: He is usually standing up for the poor and downtrodden, sometimes blaming, sometimes praising.

Adding that Connor had never had a court verdict given against him, Gardiner told the court that there had, however, been four actions against the writer over articles he had written in the Daily Mirror. In one case, £50 was paid to Oswald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists, while an action by a Soho gentleman was subsequently dropped as was a case brought by a property dealer, but a fourth case was settled with an out of court payment of £250.

Gardiner confirmed to the jury that Connor had seen one and a half of Liberace’s films, which were shown on British television in 1956. "I say one